Best of the Week — First Winner

AP team documents growth of landmines’ hidden toll in Myanmar

Months of reporting by Victoria Milko, David Rising and a colleague in Myanmar led to the most authoritative look yet at the problem of landmines in the country.

Their story recounted how a boy was maimed and teenagers killed. The team was also able to get military defectors and others in the country to share with AP how civilians are used as human shields and how groups reuse mines they claim to have cleared. The story demonstrates that this will be an issue in the country for years to come.

For their work documenting the horror of landmines in one of the world’s most isolated countries, we are honored to award Milko, our AP colleague in Myanmar and Rising this week’s Best of the Week — First Winner.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP breaks news of a spike in the number of Mauritanians migrating to US

AP showed how and why a major influx of Mauritanians is arriving in the United States.Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Touching look at the life and death of Afghan interpreter killed in DC

told the story of a former U.S. military interpreter in Afghanistan, who fled the Taliban only to be shot to death while working as a ride-share driver in Washington, D.C.Read more.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Yearlong photo project shines spotlight on coal-country drag 

help show that this is more than just entertaining, but a way of life.Read more.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP investigation sheds light on the suffering of millions of Ethiopians because of food aid theft

worked together to follow up on their earlier newsbreak of a massive theft of food aid allegedly orchestrated by Ethiopian officials to feed fighting forces and sell the food in markets.Read more.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Target sparks outrage by removing certain products celebrating Pride month

spotted a sourced story in the NY Post that Target had recently held an emergency meeting to relocate some of its LGBTQ+ merchandise after receiving backlash at certain stores.Read more.

Best of the Week — First Winner

Extraordinary effort as well as outstanding planning delivered impeccable coverage around the King's coronation

The coronation of King Charles III posed huge logistical challenges for the AP to cover, especially for those stuck outside enduring hours of soaking rain. But collaboration among dozens of AP staff, led by reporter Danica Kirka, videojournalist Kwiyeon Ha, photographer Alastair Grant, photo editor Anne-Marie Belgrave, Special Events Editor Susie Blann and Senior Producer Maria Grazia Murru, resulted in two weeks of exemplary all-formats storytelling, topped by the spectacular crowning itself.  

The results showed:  explanatory and feature-driven journalism in the lead-up to the wall-to-wall coverage on the day and weekend. Kirka’s knowledge from years working the royal beat enabled AP to offer clients a variety of stories covering the king and queen's profiles, the Windsor family drama, the clouds over the Commonwealth, the future of the monarchy, the economy and much more.  

The weather and limited access on May 6 threw up several challenges. The team overcame them all to participate in huge video and photo pool operations while providing unique AP unilateral coverage from the best camera positions.  

For the story told deeply, colorfully and powerfully across all formats, Kirka, Ha, Grant, Belgrave, Blann and Murru, with dozens of others contributing, earn Best of the Week — First Winner.

Best of the Week — First Winner

AP investigation uncovers brutal murder of a 16-year-old by Burkina Faso soldiers

A video in Burkina Faso showing men in military fatigues walking among the bloodied bodies of boys with their hands bound surfaced on social media in mid-February. A six-week AP project delivered a frame-by-frame analysis of the graphic, 83-second video of the killings and tracked down the relatives of one of the victims: Adama, a 16-year-old cattle herder, piecing together his final hours. A soldier smashed his head with a large rock.

Government officials denied involvement in the killings, but analysis by Global Investigative Reporter Michael Biesecker was able to show the soldiers were wearing uniforms and had vehicles consistent with members of the Burkinabe military. After West Africa Correspondent Sam Mednick got a tip, Biesecker was able to geolocate the killings to Camp Zondoma, a military base near Ouahigouya.

Mednick and her Ouagadougou translator located the teen’s family after people in the capital with ties to Ouahigouya connected them with Adama’s uncle, the first person willing to talk. The translator whose identity cannot be disclosed played a key role in getting the family to speak, despite great personal risk. Mednick persuaded the uncle to let her interview the boy’s mother, who was unaware that her son’s death had been filmed.

Visual journalist Marshall Ritzel produced a video highlighting the visual investigation and exclusive interviews with Adama’s family. An edit of the video by digital audiences producer McKinnon de Kuyper was among AP’s top social posts of the week.

For shining a spotlight on the sort of casual murder that takes place in countries around the world, Mednick, Biesecker, Ritzel, the anonymous translator in Ouagadougou and de Kuyper win this week’s first place best of the week.

Best of the Week — First Winner

AP looks ahead at new generation’s hopes 20 years after U.S. invasion of Iraq, not just behind at destruction

AP boasts about its global reach. An all-formats package reported from Iraq demonstrates how the deep expertise of its journalists also reaches back through history. 

We have an amazing team that covers Iraq day in and day out. But we also have a hidden resource: people who were there when history happened and are with us today. When we see the opportunity, we can offer our readers and customers that context. That was the case with Jerome Delay and John Daniszewski, both of whom were there in 2003 at the beginning of it all. They went back to offer some context about what has changed.

Delay and Daniszewski were both among the few international journalists in Baghdad when the U.S. launched its “shock and awe” campaign. They joined with video journalist Lujain Jo, a native Iraqi, and video journalist Jerry Marmer, who was embedded with Marines who invaded by land 20 years ago, to deliver an authoritative and nuanced portrait of a country that’s been out of the spotlight since the defeat of the Islamic State group five years ago.  

Instead of focusing solely on the war-torn image that many Iraqis say is outdated, the AP team’s package also focused on what’s ahead for Iraq. Beyond exclusive interviews with the Iraqi president and prime minister, they also conducted dozens of interviews with Iraqi youth. These gave a deeper and sometimes counterintuitive look at a generation interrupted by war and terrorism, whose voices are rarely heard outside their home country. Half of Iraq’s population of 40 million is too young to remember Saddam Hussein.   

For their sensitive and forward-looking view of an invasion that hit Iraq 20 years in the past, bolstered by their own lived experiences of it, Delay, Daniszewski, Jo and Harmer are this week’s Best of the Week — First Winner.  

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP marked the 50th anniversary of the occupation at Wounded Knee by going back in time

led the 50th anniversary package for the occupation at Wounded Knee as a perfect example of collaboration and coordination across formats, departments and even one of AP’s members. Read more.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Standout AP coverage culminates with queen’s funeral

followed up on their exceptional initial work and continued their record-breaking coverage in the week leading up to the queen’s funeral, delivering outstanding all-formats journalism and giving clients an array of offerings from virtually every event and every perspective.AP’s stories and visuals captured the pomp and ceremony, and the emotions of mourners lined up for many for hours to pay their respects as the queen lay in state. AP’s stories ranged from a first-person account of waiting in that queue to how the queen set the stage for the transition to Charles to an evocative account inside Westminster Abbey during Monday’s funeral — and much more.Coverage of the funeral itself saw stunning usage of AP’s content, while the collective 12-day round-the-clock effort won near-unanimous praise from AP customers.Read more

Best of the Week — First Winner

AP journalists overcome odds to cover powerful quake that killed tens of thousands in Turkey and Syria 

More than a dozen AP journalists worked non-stop with translators and drivers, crisscrossing a battered landscape, driving on icy roads for up to 10 hours on any given day to reach some of the hard-hit areas. They defied freezing temperatures to capture the big and the small: the scale of the destruction, and the tales of hope that came with each and every new rescue. 

The 7.8 earthquake and the ensuing 7.5 temblor that followed struck southeastern Turkey and northern Syria on Feb. 6. It will go down in history as the deadliest natural disaster in modern times in a region already battered by years of conflict.

Years of experience working in Turkey, Syria and Lebanon translated into a quick response in the field and aggressive reporting under extremely challenging circumstances.

For their extraordinary display of bravery, skill and dedication, AP’s Turkey and Syria earthquake teams are this week’s Best of the Week – First Winner. 

From Turkey’s capital, Ankara, to the earthquake’s hardest-hit Hatay province to rebel-held northwestern Syria, AP journalists worked day and night, risking injury and worse, to produce heart wrenching coverage.

For their extraordinary display of bravery, skill and dedication, AP’s Turkey and Syria earthquake teams are this week’s Best of the Week — First Winner. 

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Former Kabul AP staffer tells story of Afghan migrants on the streets of Brussels

told the story of Afghan asylum seekers sleeping on the streets of the EU's capital, in a flagrant example of the bloc's failures to manage migration humanely.Read more.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Bison spread as Native American tribes reclaim stewardship

took readers and viewers inside efforts by Native American tribes to restore bison to their lands after the animals were driven near extinction by white settlers.

Read more.

Best of the Week — First Winner

Monthslong investigation weaves sordid tale of debauchery within DEA

"The drug war is a game,” José Irizarry told two AP reporters during his final moments of freedom. “It was a very fun game that we were playing.”

Irizarry’s decision to spend some of his last few hours before beginning a 12-year federal prison sentence with two AP reporters in early 2022 was a moment years in the making that yielded a bombshell bacchanal of a story -- itself months in the making.

Four years ago, just before starting at The Associated Press, New York-based investigative reporter Jim Mustian received a tip about a DEA investigation into one of the agency’s own agents in Colombia. That spiraled into a string of AP scoops by Mustian and Miami-based Latin America correspondent Joshua Goodman on DEA corruption in Latin America, including an exclusive on the arrest of that agent. Irizarry had been accused of conspiring with Colombian drug cartels to divert millions from DEA money laundering stings in what prosecutors called one of the worst betrayals in DEA history.

For a deeply reported and compelling investigation, telling the tale of a former war-on-drugs warrior who crossed multiple boundaries, Mustian and Goodman earn AP’s Best of the Week — First Winner honors.

Best of the Week — First Winner

‘Method to the violence’: Dogged investigation and groundbreaking visuals document Bucha ‘cleansing’

An all formats team of AP journalists, working in partnership with PBS “Frontline” and SITU Research, used surveillance camera footage, intercepted phone calls and an exclusive 3D animation of Bucha to detail Russia’s monthlong reign of terror in the Ukrainian city.

The evidence collected, including 80.000 video files and thousands of audio files, told the chilling tale of the fall of Bucha and how, over the month that followed, Russian occupiers terrorized the local population with raids, torture and summary executions. In phone calls home Russian soldiers described “zachistka” — cleansing — killing civilians under orders from their leaders.

No other news organization has conducted such a deep and revealing analysis of the atrocities in Bucha.

For their meticulous, innovative work and their collaboration across formats and continents, the team of Erika Kinetz, Oleksandr Stashevskyi, Vasilisa Stepanenko, Adam Pemble, Allen Breed, Michael Biesecker, Jeannie Ohm and Dario Lopez is AP’s Best of the Week — First Winner.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Sweeping coverage puts AP ahead on Musk’s first week at Twitter

teamed up with a cast of AP colleagues to deliver scoop after scoop on Elon Musk’s tumultuous first week at Twitter. AP prevailed by placing a premium on one defining element of the storyline: How the platform is changing and how that affects regular people and their discourse on the platform.After Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion, the Technology team knew that the first week would be critical to determining what the celebrity CEO intended for the platform. As the company veered into uncharted territory, the journalists worked sources, aggressively but responsibly reporting what AP could see and confirm, ensuring reliable, fact-based coverage.From the chaotic layoffs to the fire sale on blue check marks to a sweeping look at Musk’s debut as Twitter CEO, the AP team broke news, setting the standard for coverage of the social media giant.Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP/‘Frontline’ investigation: Russian brutality was strategic

of the AP teamed up with PBS “Frontline” on a joint investigation showing that the much-reported Russian violence against civilians in and around Bucha, Ukraine, was not carried out by rogue soldiers. Rather, it was strategic and organized brutality, perpetrated in areas under tight Russian control and where military officers — including a prominent general — were present.For a pair of stories, AP and “Frontline” interviewed dozens of witnesses and survivors, reviewed audio intercepts and surveillance camera footage, and obtained Russian battle plans.One of Kinetz’s stories tied the violence to Russian Col. Gen. Alexander Chaiko, who was in command. The other shows the wrenching impact of the Russian terror campaign on one woman who lost the man she called her “big, big love.”Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Only on AP: No US-born Black players in the World Series

noticed at the 2005 World Series that the Houston Astros fielded a team without any U.S.-born Black players, prompting the AP baseball writer to wonder when he would cover a World Series without such a player on either team. The answer: 2022.Leaning on his previous reporting, reaching out to sources and working closely with Race and Ethnicity reporter Aaron Morrison for precise language about Black identity in baseball clubhouses, Walker and AP were alone in reporting that this year’s Astros-Phillies Fall Classic would be the first since 1950 without any U.S.-born Black players.In a World Series full of big names and rich storylines, Walker’s piece was undoubtedly the buzz of baseball in the days before Game 1. It was the top Google result for searches of “World Series,” “MLB” and “baseball” for several days, and it was cited widely even outside the sports world, by NPR, CNN and others.Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP reporting examines lack of diversity in the NHL

brought attention to the lack of diversity in the NHL — a league 84% white — with a set of spot stories, interviews and analysis.Sports writer Wawrow had started reporting on diversity in the NHL as the league was preparing to release a “race report card.” In advance of that report, AP published Wawrow’s widely played story quoting a Black player who blasted the league’s lack of progress on diversity.AP also obtained a copy of the NHL’s report before other news organizations, setting up fellow sports writer Whyno for a full story, including interviews, on the day of the release. He then followed with an analysis piece on the league‘s study.Read more